Sleeping in the cabin on top of San Jacinto was interesting to say the least. It was bitterly cold, and it looked like the bunks would collapse in on each other. Despite this no one was squished and we enjoyed slipping and sliding down from the summit the next morning. One of the few benefits of snow travel is that when going downhill you can just go wherever you want (within reason) and cutting straight across country is often a better choice than following a windy gps trail you can’t even see.

As our merry band of snow glissaders approached the PCT we ended up in a nice gully, I quickly realized we were on top of a thin layer of snow with a fast flowing stream underneath and we got out quickly.

At the point where it intersected the PCT we stopped to get some water and Town accidentally dropped his water bottle into an exposed part of the stream. Town and Happy Feet spent a few minutes trying to crawl down to get it only to realize the water bottle was right next to them buried in the snow.

Around this time a tall man came rambling up who we had been seeing off and on for a while, Enigma. We chatted for a bit and ended up hiking off with him. Our tramily had grown by one.

As we continued walking on the snow we had one of the more infamous areas ahead, Fuller Ridge. This was fear mongered by many in Idyllwild and we were not certain of what it would be like. As we were traversing a ridgeline there were a few steep spots but nothing out of the ordinary or even as steep as Apache Peak’s traverse.

Upon reaching the end of Fuller ridge I turned around and asked if that was it? All the stress for nothing, just a snowy traverse on a mellow slope. I was beginning to understand that I would need to try and separate the fear mongering from actual advice for future “technical” sections, a harder task than one might think.

As we descended from Jacinto we dropped 9,000 feet towards a big freeway and the Casino town of Cabazon. We had a disappointing resupply, I had my first ever experience at In and Out burger (to the shock of many) and we ended up staying the night in the Casino sharing a room with Happy Feet, Enigma, Weatherman, Town and Enigma. It was my first time being in a Casino and it was an interesting cultural experience to say the least… I was very excited to get back out into the desert and hills.

The next few days were beautiful with wildflowers and an interesting section of trail which had washed away. We simply hiked in the water as we had practiced many times on the trails in Southern Utah. We also saw various snakes on trail and enjoyed the views of Jacinto behind us as we made our way further north. Eventually we arrived at Big Bear where we stayed at the local Hostel for two nights.

We met many awesome people at the Hostel including Second Chance Hiker, Lullaby, Butch and Bird. Several of these people we would continue to see over the entire trail, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

After leaving Big bear the trail meandered from hills to traversing desert canyons following rivers and Reservoirs. There was also a popular hot springs spot full of nudists. We only spent an hour or so there before hiking on, but some of the people there were hikers that had been vortexed into staying, in some cases even for a day or two.

Heidi had a Ukelele which she played on trail but Town happened upon one which was being passed forwards up the trail to try and get it back to its original owner, a women named Sunkist. Heidi taught Town a few chords and our party started getting the odd nickname “The Musicians”. We were named this by another group of three guys called “The three stooges” who we were introduced to at one camp spot, at first we were off put by them and their morning group push ups but as time would go by we began to very much enjoy their presence on the trail.

In the next main town of Wrightwood we stayed for two nights. we had an amazing chimichanga, shared a hotel room for one night and stayed with some fantastic trail angels for the second. They each had hosted PCT hikers since the 1990’s and one of them was an old school climber with some great stories about the early days of rock climbing in Yosemite and around California.

We were becoming good friends with everyone in our Tramily and the days were filled with conversations as we meandered through the hills and the days began to go by as the miles were covered.

We all had such unique backgrounds and yet we all got along like good siblings, all be it like a disfunctional family on occasion. We were quite the eclectic group at that, all of us on the trail for our own random reasons but a shared interest in just being ourselves and not pressuring ourselves to be doing big mile days.

Enigma was a father of two who hailed from Albuquerque, he had hiked the trail the previous year all the way to South Lake Tahoe before getting off trail due to injuries. He was our source of information on what was coming up seeing as he remembered quite a bit about the terrain and what to expect.

Happy feet was from South Carolina and was already a seasoned through hiker from having backpacked the Appalachian trail. He had also cycled across the United States, so we enjoyed chatting about the differences and similarities of through hiking to cycle touring. I was introduced to him as Happy Feet and I didn’t find out his name for the longest time on trail, it wasn’t till months later that he let me know what it was. He had many goals for after the PCT as well including canoeing down the Missouri and Mississippi and climbing all the highest points in every state. He loved camping in solitude so would always camp on the edge of our camp, he watched a movie every night on his phone and sometimes you could hear him giggling from the tent.

Weatherman was from California originally but had spent the last several years teaching English in Germany. He had also taught English in China for a time and often was reading classic novels while on trail which we would discuss while hiking. We had been hiking with him since day four on trail so he was the oldest member of our trail family. Like a classic sibling he loved to tweak out those around him a little by precariously cooking at odd angles with his pot. To my knowledge he never spilled his dinner.

Town was a Florida man. He had been a mechanical engineer but after losing his job he decided to try a different lifestyle and travel as much as possible. His first trip was the PCT but he was planning on continuing for several years afterwards. I spent the days trying to talk him into doing the Camino in Spain and hearing about his love of cruises. We both shared rather nerdy interests and eventually he got me into listening to D&D podcasts for literally hundreds of hours on the PCT.

As we left Wrightwood we approached what would be the next “challenging” section with the peak of Baden Powel. With a cool head on ones shoulders it wasn’t too difficult and we made our way down to a camp spot after having finished off the ridgeline walking.

While descending Heidi slipped and stressed her knee and upon waking up the next day we realized it wasn’t feeling better. She decided to hitch to the next resting spot of Hiker Heaven to let it heal and wait for us to catch up. We arrived at the closed off highway crossing right after the camp and as we anxiously wondered how she was going to get a ride on a closed, dead end highway, a car pulled up. As luck would have it a trail angel had been coming up to check on hikers and see if anyone needed help! After talking with him he offered her a ride to Hiker Heaven and the rest of us continued on. As some would say, “the trail provides” and this was a perfect example of it. Luck was on our side with this trail angels kindness.

Weatherman and Town opted to road walk through a section to avoid some more climbing and snow fields. Towards the end of the day wjile waiting for Enigma with Happy Feet, I suddenly had the interest to hike by myself for just a bit and to take off and push myself, just to see what kind of ground I could cover. I bid farewell to Enigma and Happy Feet and took off to cover a few more miles before dark.

I enjoyed the solitude and ran into several other hiking groups, as i made my way into the disk hours of hiking. Lying alone and watching the stars i loved a moment all to myself in the woods.

I had told Heidi I would see her in 4 and a half days but I covered the ground between where she injured herself in three days. I wanted to challenge myself and it culminated in covering 62 miles in two days and my first blisters of the PCT.

Camping alone was lovely, lying at night alone watching the stars and listening to the silence. I caught up to Town and Weatherman and we hiked for a few hours together before I kept pushing past them. We stopped near a fire station where it was popular for hikers to call and order pizza delivered to the park we were hanging out at. A backpackers dream.

Town, Tea Leaves and I with several other hikers headed out from the pizza spot and hiked into the night setting up camp on top of an exposed ridgeline.

I ended the last day of my solo foray talking for a long while with a woman from Switzerland as I tried to avoid thinking about the numbers of Cougar sightings everyone had been talking about in the area and how late it was getting.

I hobbled into Hiker Heaven, a popular spot for hikers to stay while hosted by trail angels who let hikers camp on their property.

I was wondering where everyone was and stumbled into the guest house where at least 20 hikers were piled into a room to watch the latest Game of Thrones episode. After reuniting with Heidi I spent several days at Hiker Heaven as the rest of the crew caught up and we enjoyed the amazing hospitality of everyone that helped keep Hiker Heaven running.

Our next branch of the trail was pretty hot and exposed as we climbed back up into the hills and we spent some time with a fellow hiker, Professor. She had studied geology so we could ask her nerdy questions about rocks on a whim. We stayed at another trail angels house, Casa de Luna, for a few nights letting Enigma and Happy feet catch up. It was a wonderful place with many spots to camp in the backyard. The taco salad dinners were awesome with easy beer access at a gas station down the street.

We spent our time reuniting with other hikers such as Bird, Ultra, Ninja, the Three Stooges, Xena and many more. Much time was spent talking about how we were to go about the Sierras especially since more snow had just been piling up in the mountains as the days went by for us in the desert. At the end of our time there we enjoyed it so much that Heidi wrote a song and sang it for our host Terry with several other hikers as back up singers to her ukulele tunes.

Leaving Casa de Luna we continued towards our next stop of Hiker town and what was considered one of the more infamous sections of trail, the aqueduct. This was infamous for being one of the hottest sections of trail since it was at the bottom of a barren valley for over 20 miles with no shade. We arrived at the next hiker enclave, Hiker Town, and we all made plans to attack this nasty section in the heat.

As luck would have it, the weather forecast was on our side and the high for the next day was only in the 70’s. Despite this most of our group opted for super early morning starts or night hiking the section. Although it sounded like fun to wander down this trail in the middle of the night with the company of many other hikers goofing around, I wanted to keep my sleep schedule quasi normal. So Heidi and I just hiked it normally at regular hours of the day.

It was actually a beautiful section with Joshua trees everywhere and insects galore loving the green and cool temperatures. I spent time doing some insect photography and we eventually made it to the other side of the aqueduct section. After the aqueduct was one of the largest windmill farms in the world. It would be our constant normalcy for days to be surrounded by windmills swishing around us and the ever present wind justifying all of them. At night you could see them blinking all around in the distance.

On our first night in the windmills we tried to push to a valley with water but it got dark and we camped in the middle of the windmill farm. The windmills have blinking red lights and I noticed while lying in the tent that there were occasional white flashes. I was wondering if it was a different kind of light from the windmills until I started hearing the thunder. Sitting in a tent on an exposed hillside during a lightning storm made for an interesting night of tense sleep as the inside of the tent was illuminated in flashes every few minutes.

The following day we caught up with Enigma and Professor, who had opted for a very early morning start to avoid the heat of the day. We also ran into a family hiking the PCT, the Bennets. We had run into them many times over the last few weeks and it was always inspiring. A family of three daughters, one son and a dog all walking the trail together with their parents. I chatted about skiing with the father, whose trail name was humorously Kidnapper, as we descended towards the next trail town of Tehachapi.

Town, who had opted to night hike through the aqueduct section decided to then night hike again to catch up with us joined us briefly before taking off to Tehachapi to avoid worsening some developing shin splints.

Professor, Enigma, Heidi and I continued to the next highway crossing and then got a ride into Tehachapi. We immediately prioritized food over finding a place to stay and got dropped off in front of Thai-hachapi. Yes we ate Thai food. While there I got a random phone call from Tal, the Israeli guy I had met who had been on Apache peak looking for his trekking poles! He was also in Tehachapi and was trying to invite us to stay with a trail angel, Brenda.

We all got a ride over to Brenda’s and met Piney, from Lake Morena, again! It was a fantastic hang out spot and we spent three days there watching Game of thrones and High Maintenance episodes while spending time soaking in the hot tub and watching the wild horses which lived in Brenda’s backyard.

We all knew this “relaxing” hiking style wouldn’t last. There were many reports coming in from hikers ahead of us about how crazy the snow level in the Sierras were. Looking at the weather and the snow depth it was a truly big snow year, perhaps even bigger than the year of 2017 for PCT hikers. We were all relatively early season hikers and entering the Sierras too early would mean intense snowstorms and lots of cold struggling; but the alternative was to enter later and risk being in the Sierras when the “big melt” hit and the spring avalanches began ramping while the river levels became dangerous for crossing.

With this in mind we were trying to plan how we were going to hike the Sierras. While we were getting rain in the desert the Sierras were getting more snow. As we sat in Tehachapi we all started ordering our crampons, ice axes and trying to time out the best weather window to enter the mountains. We had to look at road closures as well to understand where we would be able to hike out of the mountains for resupply, and none of us were entirely sure how fast we would be able to hike on the snow or if we would find dry ground to camp on. We were still over a hundred miles from Kennedy Meadows South and the entrance into the Sierras but we knew what was coming would potentially change everything. It would change how we hiked the trail, who was in our group and expectations would be rocked by the reality of what living and hiking on snow for weeks on end would actually be like. Leaving Tehachapi we seized ourselves for the unknown that was to come. We tried not to rush and hoped that our plans would pay off.